Thorn

Everything dies. Without you I saw one million flamingos ignite a lake in Africa. The same darkness descended everywhere. When you dropped your body, I hoped you would tremble for the beak of God. Why did we wash you three times tearing off the girl’s white dress to swaddle you in an austere shroud? Some say, dying, not death, teaches. You gained nothing from that reduction. Months in the narrow foxhole of disease– you dug it; we filled it in. My father is thin as you were in his hospital bed, both of you let everything go, care for nothing except that barbed hook– life. It grabbed you like a thorn until you begged me, “Pull it out.”